The past few days the weather has been in the 60’s, even hitting the 70’s one day. I am happy to say that this has enabled me to go in the garden and start cleaning up. I have already finished the perennial bed in the front and also the side of the house, next to the driveway, (mostly shade). The Hellebores are blooming and I cut the spent blooms on the Hydrangeas, there is already some leaf buds popping through. I am a little confused about cutting back the Hydrangeas as they were here when we moved in and I don’t know what type they are. Some need to be cut all the way down and others get new growth on the dead wood. I have already lost 2, I think from cutting back, so now I just cut off the dead blooms and hope for the best!
I had the golf cart out and of course I think of Maggie. Since she was a puppy one of her favorite things to do is chase me and seeing what she could steal from all the stuff in the golf cart. Her favorite steal was my garden gloves, (she even stole a neighbors once) I returned the glove totally intact, but the neighbor didn’t think it was so funny. I finally got wise and left a small rag for her to steal and pretended she wasn’t supposed to have. Maggie was always outside with me when gardening. I would be on my knees and she would sidle up and give me kisses. I would stop and give her some love. Every facet of my life is affected by not having her here with me.
I also cleared what I call “my misfit garden.” When I don’t know where to put some perennials I put them here, although there is now no more room. The bed is mostly sun. I have a big patch of Bee Balm, a Beauty Bush, a Butterfly Bush, (which I cut down), some white Iris, Crocosmia, and Milkweed. I cut down the Beauty Bush, the Milkweed had already been cut down and weeded the whole bed. On the other side of this bed there is a Nandina and I had to pull up a lot of little sprouts. Unfortunately I hadn’t seen a few and they grew right at the base of the Butterfly Bush and were very hard to pull out. I like Nandina but sometimes its a pain in the ass to keep it under control.